with the
most general applause. Mr. Dryden wrote the Prologue, and Epilogue. It
will be naturally expected, that, having mentioned the earl of Essex by
Banks, we should say something of a Tragedy which has appeared this
year on the Theatre at Covent-Garden, of the same name. We cannot but
acknowledge, that Mr. Jones has improved the story, and heightened the
incident in the last act, which renders the whole more moving; after
the scene of parting between Essex, and Southampton, which is very
affecting, Rutland's distress upon the melancholy occasion of parting
from her husband, is melting to the last degree. It is in this scene Mr.
Barry excells all his cotemporaries in tragedy; he there shews his power
over our passions, and bids the heart bleed, in every accent of anguish.
After Essex is carried out to execution, Mr. Jones introduces the queen
at the tower, which has a very happy effect, and her manner of behaving
on that occasion, makes her appear more amiable than ever she did in any
play on the same subject. Mr. Jones in his language (in this piece)
does not affect being very poetical;--nor is his verification always
mellifluent, as in his other writings;--but it is well adapted for
speaking: The design is well conducted, the story rises regularly, the
business is not suspended, and the characters are well sustained.

5. The Island Queens, a Tragedy, of which we have already given some
account; the name of it was afterwards changed to the Albion Queens.

6. The Innocent Usurper, or the Death of Lady Jane Gray, a Tragedy,
printed 1694. It was prohibited the stage, on account of some groundless
insinuations, that it reflected upon the government. This play, in
Banks's own opinion, is inferior to none of his former. Mr. Rowe has
written likewise a Tragedy on this subject, which is a stock play at
both houses; it is as much superior to that of our author, as the genius
of the former was greater than that of the latter.

7. Cyrus the Great, a Tragedy. This play was at first rejected, but it
afterwards got upon the stage, and was acted with great success; the
plot is taken from Scudery's Romance of the Grand Cyrus.

We cannot ascertain the year in which Banks died. He seems to have been
a man of parts; his characteristic fault as a writer, was aiming at the
sublime, which seldom failed to degenerate into the bombast; fire he
had, but no judgment to manage it; he was negligent of his poetry,
neither has he sufficiently